'Snow Falling on Cedars' comes to Hartford Stage

Joe Meyers, Staff Writer

Published 6:40 pm, Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Kimiye Corwin and Dashiell Evans are featured in the stage version of the best-selling novel "Snow Falling on Cedars" at Hartford Stage through Feb. 13.
Photo: Contributed Photo

Kimiye Corwin and Dashiell Evans are featured in the stage version...

Kimiye Corwin and Brian Tee are featured in the Hartford Stage production of "Snow Falling on Cedars," a murder mystery set in a Japanese-American community in the decade after World War II.
Photo: Contributed Photo

There was a time -- 50 or 60 years ago -- when popular novels would be adapted to the stage before they became films.

Big best-sellers, such as Allen Drury's "Advise and Consent" (1959), were Broadway hits years before moviegoers saw them turned into movies.

These days, the movie industry tends to snap up popular fiction and nonfiction alike, so the current production of "Snow Falling on Cedars" at Hartford Stage is a rarity.

The stage version of David Guterson's best-selling murder mystery was a hit at Seattle's Book-It Repertory Theatre and then in Portland, Ore., where it caught the attention of director Jeremy B. Cohen, who has brought the show to Connecticut.

("Snow Falling on Cedars" was turned into a movie 12 years ago, but few saw the Ethan Hawke vehicle.)

Cohen says novels rarely appear on stage these days, because "once books are written now most of them are (optioned or) purchased for the movies and it becomes really, really difficult to get the stage rights.

"Many times, after eight or nine years of sitting on a book, they don't even make the movie," he added.

Cohen was the associate artistic director at Hartford Stage up until the end of last season, when he was appointed artistic director at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, a company dedicated to developing new plays.

"I'm happy that Hartford Stage already has a history of linking literature with the stage," Cohen said, citing his own production of "Tom Sawyer" last season and the venue's hugely popular annual presentation of "A Christmas Carol."

Novels can be challenging to transfer to the stage because of their physical heft -- in terms of multiple locations and a big cast of characters -- but Cohen thinks the larger-than-average stage in Hartford has proven to be welcoming to epic stories.

Cohen believes that almost all theater boils down to good storytelling, so tapping into the narrative skills of modern American novelists makes perfect sense.

"Snow Falling on Cedars" also raises many political issues.

The story is set in the Pacific Northwest in 1954, where a Japanese-American fisherman is accused of murder. The case stirs up memories of the World War II internment camps, where Japanese-Americans were held until the war was over under the assumption that many of them might be Japanese agents.

"I always like chatting with the audience after a play and this one gives you a lot to talk about. What does it mean to be talking about issues of American history? Pieces of it that we are willing to own and pieces that are painful to remember?," Cohen said.

The story raises issues of xenophobia that have parallels to the post-9/11 fears of immigrants coming into the United States.

"It's always a big challenge to mix the personal and the political ... but I think this play does that," Cohen said.

Cohen was happy that playwright Kevin McKeon was able to come to Hartford to do more work on his script.

"We didn't have to reinvent the wheel, because the story was intact, but we've tried to re-examine the most powerful moments," he said.